TORCS and ROS-ES

a Low-Power Autonomous Driving Testbed with ROS and TORCS and a pun based on Runs and Roses

What is included

• Ubuntu 18.04 Docker container (based on this image) with
  • LXDE Desktop Environment
  • VNC-server that allows control from any web browser
  • ROS Melodic release
  • Extended TORCS racing simulator (patched with picture and control pipeline) (link)
  • TORCS_ROS bridge (link)

Possible Applications

• collect training data machine learning (image, sensor data, control data)
• implement and test own autonomous driving algorithms
• write bridges to existing autonomous driving frame works

What is different from other AD-kit simulator frame works

• Low-end hardware requirements
• Batteries included (torcs / ros / bridges)
• Support of graphical desktop using any web-browser

Usage

• Update the GIT-submodules git submodule init && git submodule update
• Run following script run_environment.sh. It builds the necessary docker image and starts the docker container.
• open a browser and goto the url http://127.0.0.1:6080/#/
• run torcs by using the desktop icon
• Get to run the quickrace in the menu - you won't be able to though, it will lock expecting a car to connect from the ROS adapter
• Start the ROS torc bridge roslaunch torcs_ros_bringup torcs_ros.launch

Requirements

• Recent Linux Distribution (64bit)
• Docker CE
• 8 GByte RAM
• 6 Gigabyte of HDD/SSD
• OpenGL > 2.0 capable graphic card

Credits

• TORCS ROS and Patched TORCS - Florian Mirus

Licence

• Source code of this repository is licensed under MIT licence
• Base Docker Image - Apache license 2.0
• torcs-1.3.7 - GPL2 and other